The Metamorphosis
by GirlWithKaleidoscopeEyes
Summary: Peter Pettigrew's transformation from boy to rat.


The Metamorphosis

A/N: What you see before you is the product of an essay for English class that I actually plan to turn in. I'm slightly nervous about the grade that I might get on it, since I obviously didn't take the assignment entirely seriously…but that's a mark of creativity, right? Besides, the story format is entirely acceptable. And my teacher _wants_ at least one literature reference…it's on her list of requirements. Not only did I manage to work in two, but my entire story _is_ a literature reference…heh.

Disclaimer: Anything you recognize is probably J.K.'s, not mine.

When Peter Pettigrew woke one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.

In other words, he was a fat rat.

Peter crawled out from under the covers and scurried aimlessly around the bed, testing out his new rat legs. He gnawed a hole in his linen sheets, testing out his new rat teeth and finding that linen was really quite tasty. He poked his head through his scarlet bed curtains and sniffed the air experimentally, whiskers quivering, testing out his new rat nose. The air smelled like predators. His new rat instincts kicked in. He squealed once in sheer terror, loudly, and scampered under the covers.

Something large with bad breath leapt onto the bed and pressed its cold nose against Peter, a trembling lump underneath the sheets. _It's Sirius_, the rational, human part of his mind thought. _I need to talk to him. We need to figure out how to change back into ourselves! _However, the animal part of his mind, which he really couldn't control yet, opted to remain shivering and hidden beneath a pile of blankets rather than face the humongous dog.

It was hard for Peter to remain stationary (except for the uncontrollable shaking) with an excitable dog bounding around the bed and snuffling in his general direction, its tail rhythmically thumping the mattress the entire time. He managed it for quite a while, but when he was very wetly sneezed on, Peter shot out from under the covers to settle himself on top of his pillow.

Fearfully, he gazed at the shaggy black dog through beady black eyes, but his teeth were bared in anger. He wanted to tell Sirius that sneezing on your friend was not proper, and ask that he please refrain from doing it. He wanted to shout at him for drooling all over the bed that he _slept in_ every night. More importantly, though, he wanted to beg Sirius to tell him how to reverse the Animagus transformation so that he could go back to just being Peter the boy for the moment.

"Squeak," he said. Being a rat, he suddenly found, severely impaired his ability to communicate. He tried to convey his message to Sirius by looking pathetic, tilting his head at him in a questioning way, and using ESP. Unfortunately, Peter had failed the telepathy unit in Divination class quite miserably. Sirius just looked at him blankly, his tongue lolling from his mouth like some limp, bloated, pink worm.

Even if he had managed to understand what Peter was trying to get across to him, Sirius would have ignored him. He was having far too much fun being a dog to even consider changing back to human form. Peter, on the other hand, was not enjoying being a rat in the least. He decided to find James and see if he might help him out.

He didn't. As it turned out, James's Animagus form was a stag; he currently was splayed awkwardly in his now too-small-for-him bed, and his antlers were tangled up in the curtains. Peter crawled up James's nose and looked at him pleadingly. James blinked back unhelpfully. Peter bit him for being distinctly useless.

In the end, Peter was able to figure out how to regain human form when his other roommate, Remus Lupin, who was not an Animagus but _was_ a werewolf, instructed him to concentrate on changing back. Peter mentally cursed himself for not thinking of this before, but was grateful that Remus always paid attention in lessons. He focused with all his energy on becoming human again, on _not being a rat anymore_, and with a pop he found himself back to normal.

"A _rat_! Of all the animals in existence, why do I have to be a rat?" he whined at no one in particular. Remus patted his back sympathetically.

"Believe me, I think you'd much less want to be a werewolf," he replied sagely.

Peter harrumphed, crossed his arms over his chest, and pouted.

In fact, Peter's Animagus form was not a rat by some unlucky chance, but because it was his true inner animal. On some level the boy knew this, and it was not his distaste with being stuck with an "uncool" animal that had him sulking, but the fact that his inner animal being a rat spoke volumes about his personality.

The night before, Peter, James, and Sirius had all finished brewing a potion, poured it in equal portions into three goblets, made a toast, held their noses, and drank the concoction. That potion was the culmination of three years of work; it was the last step of the Animagus transformation process. According to their research, the actual physical change would occur overnight. Peter, overwhelmed with anticipation, spent a fair amount of time tossing and turning before he finally fell asleep.

Could he perhaps be a noble lion, like the symbol of his house, Gryffindor? Might he be something powerful and intimidating, like a tiger or a bear? Would he be a bird of some sort; maybe an eagle or a falcon?

No, Peter Pettigrew was destined to be a rat.

He did an outstanding job of proving why this was on the occasion of Halloween, 1981. On this day Peter not only betrayed two of his best friends to their deaths but also murdered a streetful of innocent pedestrians, framed another of his friends for it, and landed him prison for twelve years.

In this startling moment of inhumanity, Peter demonstrated that he was, regardless of what his physical appearance might suggest, a rat.

From then on, when the traitor Peter Pettigrew woke, more often than not from unsettling dreams, he found himself irrevocably transformed into a fat rat.

In other words, he was a monstrous vermin.

A/N: The topic was "man's inhumanity".


End file.
